Outdoors? Plus, budget ><

Mojisola

heartbreak_star wrote: »

Two friends of mine recently tied the knot, did legal bit the day before (which they described as "signing the papers") and their own vow exchange ceremony and reception at a campsite (which they described as "the wedding").

I wondered if it might feel disconnected, but they said that thinking of the legalities as just signing the papers to make way for the real wedding really helped.

This is the way it's done in several mainland European countries.

The legal bit is kept completely separate from any other celebrations. Some people do both bits on the same day; some get married 'for the state' days or even weeks before a religious service or party.

CreditCrunchie

We are getting married outdoors. We are having a legal wedding as well (on the same day!), but the main part of things for us will be the handfasting later on, which will be conducted by our best friends (all of us are Pagan) in the middle of a circle of our friends at a beautiful farm in the countryside. I was worried too that things may feel a little disconnected, and more specifically that our more traditional/ religeous family would perhaps only come to the legal ceremony and not to the handfasting (and vice versa) if we held them on seperate days, hence why we're doing both together. We're making an entire weekend of it though, friday to sunday, with non stop activities

One thing i would say though, is if you want outdoors, forget a low budget! The crazy thing is, the more rustic and 'back to nature' you want it, the more you'll pay in general as you will need to consider a marquee, generators, toilets, alternative catering, accomodation etc, as well as pay for two ceremonies at two different places potentially.

The alternative is finding a village hall with land attached. They often rent out the space at very cheap rates, and there is usually a kitchen and possibly even a bar on site.

Hitched.co.uk is a great forum for general wedding chat, and I personally love greenweddingshoes, rocknrollbride, and festivalbride wedding blogs as they all deal with 'alternative' weddings.

Good luck x